Food inflation and governments meddling with production

[whostolemycheeseagain]

Long time poster here

I have been reading about this for a few months now. Food inflation is going through the roof in many parts of the world (it certainly is in the US and UK) and
governments are setting impossible standards to make the situation worse!

For example. the Dutch are the second largest exporter of agricultural products worldwide (think cheese and tomatoes) and the EU are centrally pushing increasingly stricter fertiliser rules that risk making their production inviable.

Food prices will go up or food will no longer be available, full stop. Livelihoods will be lost.

How is this allowed to happen? Why are not more people worried about this and why is this not making the MS news?

nltimes.nl/2023/01/20/farmers-must-comply-stricter-eu-fertilizer-rules-earlier-farmers-furious

www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0712/top-agricultural-producing-countries.aspx

It's a complex picture because fertilisers can also have negative effects, eg Therese Coffey allow bee killing pesticides again this year. No bees, no food. Fertiliser run off is a massive source of water pollution. All paths to net zero realistically have large land use changes and shifts to more vegetarian /less meat diets since so much farming produces cattle feed it's a very inefficient way to feed societies. (Not neat free btw, a 30% reduction and in the UK this is already a trend).

All paths to net zero realistically have large land use changes and shifts to more vegetarian /less meat diets since so much farming produces cattle feed it's a very inefficient way to feed societies

No, sorry. Put in place measures to reduce the rate of population growth, but don't starve people who are already alive.

Most humans need animal food for survival (in spite of what the very vocal vegan crowd say) and will not maintain health on a 'meat light' diet

Also the financial impact for producers and whole countries taking away livelihoods is massive

Thank you for this information, I wasn't aware. But that said I'm not surprised, the net zero agenda is also behind the underinvestment in energy over the past several years which is driving some of the inflation that we're all experiencing. I get wanting to move away from fossil fuels but it's very short-termist to reduce our production when there is no proper alternative in place. Sounds like a similar thing is happening with fertiliser!

I think governments don't consider the long term impacts of their policies.

I think governments don't consider the long term impacts of their policies

Or perhaps they do and don't care. Many are arguing that in the NL the government is following a globalist agenda set by unelected 'leaders' that is detrimental to the people who elected them.

What's the point of feeding an increasing number of people with rubbish food with questionable nutritional value?

We will just have a global population of undernourished excuses for humans, riddled with malaise and too hungry to be able to think clearly.

It's a bleak future

The "Net zero agenda" had nothing to do with this. It has been known for decades that an over reliance on fertiliser and the industrialisation of farming would lead to trouble.

Over 60% of the calories consumed by humans come from just four crops now. These have been industrialised beyond any natural recognition and this puts huge swathes of humanity at risk, as the reliance on such limited band of crops results in increased soil degredation (making it harder and harder to maintain yeilds) as well as the fact that they have fairly limited growing ranges (at least for them to commercially viable) with many key growing areas now under threat from the impacts of climate change.

As for blaming net zero for an "under investment in energy," I sincerely hope you're joking. If governments and businesses alike hadn't been so laser focused on fossil fuels, we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead of investing in renewable energy, governments and energy conglomerates have spent billions upon billions trying to extract the ever diminishing and more inaccessible fossil fuels. As things like fertiliser production and agriculture are very energy intensive the situation is made all the worse.

Fertilisers are actually a very good example of the issue. Most fertilisers use ammonia as a foundational raw material, and ammonia is produced by combining hydrogen and nitrogen. Currently, the most commercially viable way to obtain hydrogen is through the steam reformation of natural gas. Natural gas prices, as we all know, have skyrocketed as the market has been impacted by war and because too many countries need it for heating, electricity production, and other industrial uses, and so fertilisers prices also have to skyrocket.

However, as you can also produce what is known as "green hydrogen", where you use renewable electricity and electrolysis to process water into hydrogen. This process is now cheaper than steam reformation but, becuase no one invested in the technology there are no induatrial scale processing plants in existence and only a few small scale pilot projects now coming online. The whole situation could have been avoided if fertiliser producers had invested in renewable energy properly as part of their development strategy. But as we know business is all about short term profit and gain.

If you want to blame anything for the state we find ourselves in then blame unfettered capitalism and the lust for profit that sees everything as something to exploit for the benefit of a few investors and CEOs.

👏👏👏

Edam cheese slices were £2.80 at Sainsbury's yesterday (a 75% increase!) while other imported cheeses like Ementhal (with German milk rather than Dutch) have gone up also but less.

No fertilizer/pesticide = no food.

But the rich and powerful will always have enough to eat!

Are you aware of the second law of Thermodynamics?

It's only just getting started, the era of plenty is over.

If you need some advice on stocking up and how to prepare there is some good advice in the preppers section: www.mumsnet.com/talk/preppers

We can't continue killing off insects such as bees at the current rate. Pesticides are a massive contributor to their decline. If we lose bees and other pollinating insects then we will have to find ways to manually pollinate crops and food prices will be insane.

Humans don't need meat with every meal to be healthy. Perhaps you should consider reading Dave Goulson's Silent Earth.

Thanks @TheNoonBell . I didn't think this existed on MN. Most of this is discussed by homesteaders in the US

Humans don't need meat with every meal to be healthy

Some do. And, in any case, we shouldn't be dictated to regarding what we can or cannot eat

Humans don't need meat with every meal to be healthy

Some do. And, in any case, we shouldn't be dictated to regarding what we can or cannot eat

No actually no uman needs to eat meat every day. You might WANT to but you certainly don't need it.

We do need bees though or we're fucked.

Only at a very basic level thanks to DH, heat moving from hotter to colder (or downhill) unless force is applied to stop it. Not totally getting the relevance? Unless you mean the actions of those to move towards green energy and a more sustainable system could be seen as the reversing force?

Because the overwhelming majority prefer bread and circuses to asking hard questions.

if you have the means, I’d be looking at becoming as self-sufficient as possible.

as for net-zero - what does it actually mean in “real terms”? If you were to live your life “net zero” - what does it look like?

Their intention is that we subsist on insects.

It's hard to say what an average "Net Zero" life would be to be honest, as it depends greatly on governments and industry doing the real work. If they do it properly, it shouldn't have a great impact on the average person as the solutions will be implemented at the industry level. The biggest changes I would expect are less choice and/or increased costs for some items.

If they don't do it properly then, quite frankly, you'd be better trying to relocate to somewhere that will be relatively isolated from the major issues and learning how to be self-sufficient (age dependent and children dependent).

I don't actually think it's all that helpful to distil the net zero concept down to an individual level as it's a global concept for a global problem. An individual can do certain things to help however, and imo the two most important/impactful would be to make their own purchasing choices through a "Net Zero" lense i.e., chosing more sustainable products and reducing overall consumption of all resources, and to vote for parties that take climate change seriously at the next election.

No actually no human needs to eat meat every day. You might WANT to but you certainly don't need it

Many people do need animal food sources for survival as they don't absorb plant based food or vitamins properly.

But even if it was only a question of 'wants', humans should not be viewed as expendable and acceptable collateral damage for the sake of a dubious 'planet emergency'

Also, it's people's livelihoods we are talking about here

vote for parties that take climate change seriously at the next election

Nobody should be voting for a party who is working against their citizens' interests in favour of an unclear global utopia.

@Thebestwaytoscareatory well, unfortunately the Scottish government have decreed where I live to become “carbon neutral” in the near-mid term future. Tbh I have no fucking idea what that means in reality - aside happy-clappy sound bites. 🤷‍♀️

nobody else here has a fucking clue either but it could well return us to the days of the clearances